So About This Gratitude Business....
As I pause here a week before Thanksgiving I hesitate a bit tolaunch into the subject of gratitude. In fact, when I look over the blogI realize I've avoided it the past couple of Thanksgivings. Notcompletely: in offering the Thanksgiving class each year I havereferenced the spirit of gratitude that Sharon inspires everyThanksgiving by raising money for the Haven, but to be honest, the vogueof gratitude practices in popular media and its omnipresence this timeof year creates a quiet wariness in me.
Don't get me wrong—I believe that anchoring the holiday in a deep seatedsense of our own feeling of gratefulness for one another and ourcircumstances and expressing that to one another is undeniably ahealthy, helpful practice. The link between practicing gratitude andwell-being is well-established through decades of research. But I alsothink that sometimes the pressure to feel gratitude can underminehappiness, and the practice of pushing gratitude, or imposing itspractice on other people can have the undesired effect of denyingrealities of deep suffering and hardship. "Pushing" gratitude can alsoundermine the sheer effort that has gone into creating one's happinessand good fortune and bring about feelings of both depression andinadequacy.
My wariness come when we are told to be grateful, even gently guided tosearch for what in our heart sparks gratitude. If we are told toessentially deny what is deeply troubling and difficult in our lives andjump right to gratitude, it can either feel so elusive as to make usfeel like we are a failure because we can't feel it, or it can create asinkhole of self loathing ("I don't have it nearly as bad as otherpeople so why is it so hard to feel grateful for my life?").
You cannot force the feeling of gratitude, and when you do, it doesn'tfeel deeply true. So I try not to do that with other people and withmyself. I find instead the practice of cultivating metta, of lovingkindness, a much more potent source of connecting with our collectiveinterdependence and interconnection, and once I tap into that, gratitudeis full and flowering. Mettais like any muscle—its tonicity must be cultivated over time and withspace. Our capacity for metta may be minimal or elusive at first, but
with practice, metta eventually becomes our response—displaces thereactions of negativity that inhibit our sense of interconnectedness.With practice, we remember that our capacity for loving kindness isboundless like the ocean of the heart, able to welcome all tides. Fromthis boundless capacity, gratitude can flourish naturally.
What does this look like? Well, google 'metta meditation' and you willfind a vast library of information and techniques. There are lots ofguided techniques to awaken loving kindness in yourself on the yogamat/cushion. I find when I steep myself in a metta practice inmeditation, even briefly, that love flows more easily, and from love,gratitude arises.
There is good guidance out there on the interwebs, far more eloquentthan what I can offer here, but if you want a very simple, 10-minuteexercise:
Sit comfortably, close your eyes, go inside.
Center your awareness of your breath in the space of the chest—the"mystical heart" space. Allow a feeling of light, of warmth, of fullnessto build there.
Bring to mind someone in your life who you love easily. (yes, that canbe your dog). Sit with that feeling for a bit, allowing love to build inyour heart.
Bring to mind someone who you love, but the love is more challenging and harder to access. Sit with it a bit.
Turn that focus of love in toward yourself. Sit with it.
Then gradually expand the feeling of love as if the feeling itself hadreaching tendrils out into the the people in your immediate environs,and then outward from there, gradually encircling your local community,and outward from there to include all sentient beings.
This is simple I know, but sometimes simple is the best way in.
I will not be telling people to be grateful, or even to search insidefor what makes them grateful this week and next. What I will do here isencourage you to tap into love this season and include yourself in thatexploration.
It's easy for me to express my own gratitude because I am extremelyfortunate in my life. I have opportunity daily to experience gratitudewhen I teach. And daily I see you all being unfailingly kind to oneanother in that lovely space, and to me, and love and gratitude flow. Iam thankful daily to all of you who come to the studio so that I canmake my living doing what I have loved to do for over 25 years. Thankyou, I wish you so much love and joy this day and every day.
Leslie